Would offering online courses compromise the liberal arts mission?

Does an online course flow out of the mission? Two words stand out: excellence and residential.  Also, in Hope College's extended mission statement, there is a phrase about the use of information technology.

Pilot program: challenged chairs to put one course online. Students were taking courses elsewhere and wanted them approved, many of these were online.

Looked at transfer credits. In 2005, for example, there were over 1000. Many of these courses are general ed courses, "throw-away" courses. Liberal arts colleges view these as foundational and important.

I have to say, this is very much an administrator's view of things. An online course might recapture revenue, keep the students within a coherent program, etc.  Where is the student learning?

Offered a handful of courses online over the summer. Transfer credits went down.

Assessment: enrollments were high; students gave good feedback. Students need to be self-motivated. But they miss classroom interaction. Love the convenience and flexibility. Can study at their own pace. Also easy for faculty to see the participation level of students and bring lagging students back into the fold.

Evaluations of faculty were very good. As a faculy member, he loved it. Could work at home, etc.

Upper-level administration really liked the program, primarily because it generates revenue.

Discussion: Mission creep? Does the success canibalize the other missions of the college? Does this change the face of the institution? The program is quite tantalizing. Is faculty training mandatory? What about students? What's more important, perhaps, is teaching them how to effectively teach in an online environment. (Yay, Andrew, I totally agree). The increased contact with students took a lot of time, but was likely extremely beneficial to the students. And finally, did the students learn more in depth, differently than a face-to-face course? No quantitative data, but seems like it was better, just informally assessing it.

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